Almost immediately after he said it, the train delays started — with four incidents in five days.

So by boasting about how “truly world-class” SMRT was, Mr Kuek jinxed it.

Last week, he did it again.

At the SMRT annual general meeting on Tuesday, Mr Kuek bragged about the award plus another one the company won for Best Public Sector Campaign given by the Singapore Institute of Public Relations. He said:

“These external endorsements are important signals that we are on the right track in bringing the group to higher levels of excellence in every field.”

Hours later, the North-South Line and East-West Line were shut down during evening rush hour, causing massive chaos across the island.

The lesson here is that for the sake of hundreds of thousands of commuters, Mr Kuek should stop gloating about how wonderful SMRT is. It’s bad luck.

The Straits Times called Tuesday night’s incident “possibly the worst MRT breakdown Singapore has experienced”.

The other contenders for worst MRT breakdown were on Dec 15 and 17, 2011.

So how do you determine which MRT breakdown is worse than another, especially now that there are so many?

By the duration of the delay?

A three-hour delay in the afternoon between the Marina Bay and Marina South Pier stations probably wouldn’t be as disastrous as a half-hour delay at 6pm on a weekday between City Hall and Raffles Place.

By the number of people affected then?

The Straits Times estimated that more than 250,000 commuters may have been affected by Tuesday’s breakdown compared to the 127,000 and 94,000 affected by the two December 2011 breakdowns.

The trouble is, those numbers are at best estimations. We need something more definitive.

You could argue that Tuesday’s breakdown was the worst because for the first time, two MRT lines were affected simultaneously.

But you could also argue that the December 2011 breakdowns were the worst because a Committee Of Inquiry was ordered by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong whereas so far, he is only “very concerned” about Tuesday’s breakdown.

On the other hand, it’s not fair to pit the two December 2011 breakdowns against Tuesday’s breakdown. That’s two against one.

To cut through all this muddle, I have come up with an authoritative method to determine which MRT breakdown is the worst — by counting the number of parody songs it has inspired.